Every now and then, I use private (or temporary) chat mode when asking something to AI.

Not because I am asking something sensitive ¹ but because it is a one-off query, and I do not want to pollute my chat history.

It may sound stupid, but …

Sometimes - most times - the default search engine DDG uses its AI to find the answer rather than just searching.

It is helpful.

Most times, I look at the answer, and done.

For a long time, I’m considering switching to Linux full time since my existing machine does not get OS updates from apple. ¹

In preparation for this “move”, I check whether all the software is available on Linux.

Vivaldi browser in on that list (available on Linux ✅).

What about my already opened tabs ? Every few days I close the temporary/ unwanted tabs. ² but I do want others on Linux. Hence the search whether it is possible. ³

If you can afford, please pay!

On the other hand, paying to read articles is expensive for you, here is an option (among many others, I’m sure) for you

Install extension like Click to remove element from the Chrome Web Store. It works with others Chromium based browsers as well, like Edge, Vivaldi, Arc and many more ¹

When you see a popup blocking the article, you can use extension like Click to remove element and remove the popup 😄

I switched to ¹ Vivaldi browser after reading this post by Mike Kennedy

To be fair, I had installed and tried Vivaldi a long time ago. But I think things got better this time around.

I seem to have stuck with it for long time.

One benefit of chromium based browsers (like Vivaldi) is that user has access to vast amount of extensions from Chrome Web store. ²

Just today, I explored two other “features” which I’m not sure how I feel about.

I wrote about Arc browser earlier here. At that time, I was still on macOS catalina, version of macOS not supported by many, including brew and Arch browser.

Now that I have successfully upgraded - I was able to get Arc working on my personal machine as well. I did not wish to make this default on my work machine - wasn’t sure if it was supported (based on Chromium, so it should work, still if something does not work, getting support from IT won’t be easy. Better stick to main stream browsers for office work)

Finally, got the access to the Arc browser.

Quick overview of what it is.

It is build on top of Chromium browser engine. But adds difference experience altogether. Benefit of using Chromium is that most of the extensions that work with Google Chrome already work. In fact, one installs the extensions from Google Chrome webstore itself 😄

Most awesome feature that made me want to try it is that it will Auto-close inactive tabs after 12 hours (default - can be increased to 24 hours, 7 or 30 days)

I’m leaning more and more towards text based workflow.

Earlier I enabled twittering-mode in Doom Emacs, and tweeted from Emacs. How 🆒 is that.

But that is when I realized that twitter has lots of URLs. If I visit a URL from my Twitter feed, it opens up in external browser by default.

I have two problems with that.

1. My flow gets disturbed.
2. The browser already has gazillion links open. Once I go there, I get distracted.

Opening links within emacs addresses both these (I think. Too early to comment)

I came across Dooble browser via one of the Hacker news post.

The browser use Qt library and thus biased towards Linux. Or so I thought. There is a pre-built dmg file for macOS.

It worked well in short test-run I did.

I wish there was a way to set it as a default browser, so I could have tested it more thoroughly.

FWIW, it did not register itself as a browser with macOS – which seems OS specific requirement.